817-The Horror of Party Beach

Film Year:  1964
Genre:  Horror, Musical
Director:  Del Tenney
Starring:  John Scott, Alice Lyon, Allen Laurel, Marilyn Clarke
MST Season:  8

The Movie

EVERYBODY'S DOIN' IT, DOIN' IT, DOIN' IT...and by "doin' it" I mean getting killed all over the place.  Toxic waste is dumped off shore, causing corpses to be mutated into goofy looking monsters.  And even worse, these monsters are complete buzzkills because THEY RUIN THE BEACH PARTIES!  But while fun-loving teens are terrorized, the dorky scientist ones seek a way to kill the beasts.

Horror of Party Beach is pretty much a no-brainer of a concept, as it simply exists to combine two genres that were hot with teenagers in the 60's:  the beach party musical and the horror film.  Cha-CHING!  The great thing about combining both of these genres is that they both have a higher crap rate than most, so this movie doesn't need to be particularly good to sell tickets.  And good it is not, so yay for being a success?

Given it's modest ambitions, I have to look at this film mostly as an "It is what it is" experience.  It's a bad movie, that can't be argued, what can be argued is that if one judges a film based upon what it wants to be and not against other films in general then the film is a triumph.  I mean, what could I really say to criticize it?  That maybe it would have been more effective with less crappy monster costumes?  But deep down those goofy monsters underline the film's tone.

No, the truth is the majority of the faults one can have with the film is just being annoyed by it because it's not the type of movie you like to watch.  And that's easy to do, because outside of the demographic that paid to see this thing first run it takes a very particular type of film viewer to appreciate something like this.  I like goofy monster movies, but not beach party movies, so I'm kinda half in the bag for this.  But luckily after a while the beach party evaporates into a silly creature feature.

But that beach party is pretty merciless for the opening half hour or so of the film.  It's a non-stop barrage of swimsuit dancing to the tune of the Del-Airs, a nothing band who's only claim to fame seems to be this movie.  If you're the biggest Del-Airs groupie in the world, put this movie on you're DVD shelf immediately.

The Episode

"MY SKULL!"

Okay folks, squeeze into your bathing suit, do the Zombie Stomp, and don't forget to Look Polish, because Horror of Party Beach is a genuine pick-me-up episode.  The movie has so many dumb qualities to pick into but has a general self-awareness.  It almost seems to welcome Mike and the Bots' commentary with open arms, and it's willing playfulness sees our boys having fun with this one.  Beginning with the nonstop beach dancing scene that opens the picture, jokes are aimed at just about everything, but the horrifying dancing at near-naked youths to the comical horror that looms.  The promiscuous first victim, Tina, takes center stage here, creating a memorable target character to follow.

As the film shifts gears to a monster movie the riffing takes a slight dip, though hardly noticeable.  The problem they're faced with is that the monster scenes are slow paced and are often similar situations repeated, whereas the beach scenes were pretty much just random nonsense stringed together.  However as luck would have it each character the monsters stalk in these scenes is so colorful and different from the previous victim that there is plenty of riff fuel to coast on.  The "science will destroy these creatures" scenes threaten to become monotonous as well, but there's still the mildly un-PC maid and the oddly dubbed female lead to play with.  This is very much a character driven riff.

On the host segment end, when we last saw Pearl and Observer they were trapped in Roman times.  Apparently this episode takes immediately after Prince of Space because literally no time has passed.  They talk their way out of being taken prisoner by posing as a pair of gods, APearlo and BrainGuyeus, which a highly amusing segment that is probably the high point of the Roman times sketches.  Mike, Crow, and Servo are also dubbed godly beings, but the Bots object to being called "Golden-Spider-Duck" and "Squat-Crimson-Pig," while Mike his hilariously overjoyed at being referred to as "average looking."  The host segments on the Satellite of Love are mostly strong, with Mike doing his beach dance in tiny trunks being an all-time classic, and Servo's newspaper gag is pretty cute.  Duds include Pearl and Observer attempting to be gods of music and a lukewarm Sodium song that feels like filler.

It occurs to me that Horror of Party Beach might make a great introductory episode to the series.  It gets across the idea of the series fairly well, the movie is just bad enough without being rough to watch, and most importantly the laughs are aplenty.  It's probably not one of the best episodes of the series, but it's a wonderful episode that is consistent with the belly laughs.

Good

The DVD

Put your tiny trunks on and dive into Shout Factory's Volume XXXVII set, which contains this episode.  Video features slight black lines, but is mostly fine.  Audio is good.

Leading the pack on the special features in an introduction by Mary Jo Pehl.  She takes the time to recall the Sci-Fi Channel's strict guidelines for the show, including film restriction and a host segment story arc.  She also talks a bit about the film itself, which seems both fascinated and horrified by (and that's just the dance numbers).

Up next is Return to Party Beach, Ballyhoo's fourteen minute featurette on the making of the film, while going somewhat in detail on the career of director Del Tenney.  Film historian Tom Weaver narrates us through the ups and downs of the production of this and Tenney's other masterpiece, Curse of the Living Corpse, while Tenney's widow Margot Hartman fills in the gaps.

Concluding the disc is a trailer for the film, which emphasizes the "horror" but not so much the "party beach."